State Board of Community and Technical Colleges staff members are continuing to keep colleges informed as budget proposals work their way through both the state House and Senate. The following memo was sent by Chris Reykdal, Deputy Executive Director – Finance for SBCTC.

The following message is being sent broadly to the community and technical college system.

The House Ways and Means Committee passed SHB-1244 today (the House version of the 2009-11 Operating Budget). The bill has been passed to the Rules Committee for possible floor consideration. We are not certain of the timing of floor action, or even if this budget will go to the floor. We believe House and Senate budget negotiations may take place with an agreed upon budget being developed before either chamber takes a floor vote.

The following amendments of importance to the CTC system were adopted by the House Ways and Means Committee (amendment sponsors are in parentheses):

3) Wait lists must be adopted in nursing programs and each year 50% of new program admits must come from the wait list (Cody);

4) SBCTC must award a new applied baccalaureate degree in Interior Design to a community or technical college by July 1, 2009, subject to HECB program approval (Haigh);

5) A requirement that SBCTC facilitate the development of University Centers in the Kitsap Region by allocating 30 FTES (existing) to Olympic College. Olympic College must coordinate with PeninsulaCollege for future baccalaureate programs in the region. This is the same language found in the Senate budget proposal (Haigh);

7) A fine-tuning of the Washington State Quality Award statute that amends the existing law to narrowly define what a “similar organization” means: they are organizations composed of examiners qualified to perform full Baldridge Assessments. In other words, the Washington State Quality Award application exemption that was provided by OFM to institutions of higher education relied on current statutory language that allowed OFM to decide alternative assessments based on “similar organizations”. OFM had determined that regional accrediting bodies were “similar organizations”, thus the exemption for higher education institutions. This budget proviso now makes it clear that only organizations that perform full Baldridge assessments can be construed as “similar organizations”. Put simply, if this passes in final form, and the Governor signs the budget with this proviso included, the colleges would once again be required to carry out the Washington State Quality Award requirement (Linville);

8) A technical amendment to restore $1.1 million in system wide cuts next biennium (Linville).

There are many more twists and turns to the budget development process and we will keep you informed at every step. We won’t update the side-by-side comparison sent out last week until we see substantial changes in the proposal of one or more chamber.